Legislation of Interest

At today's meeting two new legislative efforts were notified of interest of the ethics community:

• S. 49 - Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act (Reported in Senate) was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and committee member John Cornyn (R-TX).  It was recently approved by the panel and is awaiting Senate action.  It is intended to provide new tools to help prosecutors target corruption among public officials.  It would rewrite and expand the "illegal gratuities" statute ( 18 USC 201) by eliminating the requirement that there be a linkage between a gift and an official action by a public official.  Under this provision, the gratuities statute would be violated whenever a gift is given to a public official "for or because of the official's or person's official position," regardless of whether any official action was taken.  It would effectively overrule Sun-Diamond holding. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:2:./temp/~c111J85Vvd::

• HR 2128 was reintroduced.  This bill would require Public Financial Disclosure Report filers to report their residence and mortgage. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.2128: